Parameterizable Steps?

[ntalbott]

I'm curious if ya'll would be open to adding a simple ability to parameterize steps. I'm not wanting regex madness (had enough of that in Cucumber!) but just something simple like:

Given %(I create an organization named :name) do |name|
  visit "/organizations/new"
  fill_in "Name", with: name
  click_on "Create"
end

It doesn't seem to break the Spinach philosophy, but I wanted to check and make sure before going off and implementing it.

[oriolgual]

At this time I'm not really into adding this feature to Spinach. I prefer to write more abstract features that don't really require sending params to the step definition.

WDYT @josepjaume @txus @divins ?

[ntalbott]

I hear you, but OTOH sometimes I want to work with two organizations in a feature, and having to do "Create an Organization" and "Create another Organization" is just clunky ("Create two organizations" is clunky, too).

[enriclluelles]

I'm -1 on this. I think that part of Spinach's beauty is that apart from having really modular internals, it constrains you to write really meaningful steps like this:

    Given there is a car with attributes known
    And there are other cars which I don't care about

    When I search for that car using its make
    Then I should see it on the list

It's more abstract than using params, but is also more meaningful because there you got written exactly what you need to know from the BDD point of view, without dealing with specifics.

And, in the extremely rare cases when I think it's worth it to DRY step creation, I just go with this instead of wanting params:

Role::LIST.each do |role|
  Given "I am a logged admin with the role #{role}" do
    @current_admin_user = Factory(:admin_user, role: Role.find_or_create_by(kind: role))
    login_as_admin(@current_admin_user)
  end
end

What do you think?

[divins]

I can't tell better my opinion than @enriclluelles at this.

[txus]

I agree with @enriclluelles as well. Scenarios should use only natural language.

[ntalbott]

Bummer - guess it's time to figure a way to write it as a plugin or do a fork. Thanks for the feedback!